


A Delicate Disposition

by thatbluenote



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Historical Accuracy, Consent, F/F, Hysteria, Praise Kink, Soft BDSM, anne is a soft top who just wants to help her naive friend, elements of control, historical smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2020-03-01 07:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18795904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatbluenote/pseuds/thatbluenote
Summary: Miss Anne Lister goes to find Miss Ann Walker on the way to her holiday in the Lake District and has an idea of how to handle her nervous disposition.





	1. What manner of remedy?

**Author's Note:**

> What if Anne went to find her on the road to the Lake District? This ignores all the canon stuff that comes after Ann leaves for her holiday with her cousin.

* * *

 

 

Love, oddly enough, could sometimes be a simple matter of roads and horses and timing.

Miss Walker’s carriage, Anne knew, would have no choice but to follow the muddy lower toll road to Manchester at a slow pace, encumbered by the ladies’ trunks and harnessed to the Walkers’ aging pair of bays, perhaps the slowest, most stubbornly plodding nags she had ever seen hitched in Yorkshire. The perfect conveyance, in other words, for two such fine and beribboned personages as Miss Ann Walker and her cousin Miss Katherine Rawson.

With a fine mount and knowledge of the high roads, however, a confident rider like Anne Lister might easily reach Manchester in half that time and, with foreplanning and a little luck, perhaps chance along the pavement at the very moment when Miss Walker alighted from her carriage on her way to supper at the Old Bell Inn.

“What a singular coincidence, Miss Lister,” Miss Rawson said, peering out from behind her cousin. Miss Walker said not a word, lips parting in some amazement to see Anne standing there before her.

“Miss Rawson. Miss Walker,” Anne greeted them with a tip of her brim and an especially warm smile for Miss Walker.

Naturally, sharing a supper of mutton, new potatoes, and the Old Bell’s best madeira with their friend Miss Lister was the least the Misses Walker and Rawson could do.

  
  


Miss Rawson proved less accommodating as dinner wore on and Anne’s observations and sly questions to Miss Walker provoked little fits of giggles and confidences shared in low tones. As soon as the pudding was cleared away, Miss Rawson protested a headache and headed upstairs, not before casting a look of pique at her cousin choosing to linger in the drawing room with Miss Lister.

Ann would not be cajoled into an early retirement, not after the stultifying hours in the airless carriage with her cousin on the journey to Manchester, and said as much to her friend when they were alone at last on the settee before the fire. “I am too pleased to have you here when I thought we should not see each other for some weeks yet,” she said with some boldness. “I am sorry for my cousin’s rudeness at supper.”

“Nonsense,” Miss Lister replied, pausing to make a genteel moue of pity. “A headache makes a boor of anyone, I am sure.” Her eyes danced with humor in the low light. “Truthfully, if we had to endure another exegesis on whose aunt’s cousin made a clever match with which minor peer’s second son, I might advise against the Lake District with her altogether, and jump into the nearest pond.”

Miss Walker’s shocked laughter rang like a merry bell in the little parlour before she stifled the sound, one hand pressed to her mouth. With the other, she reached across to press Anne’s arm before composing herself again, her hazel eyes wide. “You are too, too wicked.”

Anne smiled at that. She leaned past Miss Walker to the decanter on the table and poured a dark, sweet liquor into two crystal glasses. “Shall we share a blackberry cordial? It tastes of summer, and will put the roses back in that pale skin of yours. Long coach journeys do not agree with you.” Before passing her the crystal glass, her fingers brushed along Ann’s cheek fondly. 

A warm, pleasant thrill passed through Ann before she paused uneasily. It was as she feared: the old familiar agitation crawled through her veins. Ann affected to smile politely behind her glass before raising it in a silent toast.

The answering smile on Miss Lister’s lips died as their glasses clinked together. “Are you not well, Miss Walker?”

A desperate blush heated Ann’s cheeks, altogether the wrong kind of color. Yet at the kind, solicitous inquiry, she felt Miss Lister might perhaps understand. Despite the quiet room, Ann dropped her voice to a discrete whisper. “My aunt dislikes me speaking about it, but I suffer from a kind of nervous complaint.”

Anne leaned closer as if to catch her words and took this in with a look of concern. “A complaint of what sort?”

“I know not what to call it. My aunt insists on summoning the doctor at every opportunity…”

“For what manner of remedy?”

Ann Walker swallowed and turned to face the cooler side of the room for a moment, away from the fire. “Doctor Day is rather fond of calomel, though I find purgatives a great trial. When I grow especially...troubled, my aunt summons a maid to apply hot vinegar compresses to my spine.”

“I see.” Miss Lister narrowed her eyes. “And does any of this effect a cure for your nervous spells?”

Ann struggled in silence some moments, worrying at the corner of her lip with her teeth. “Miss Lister, have you ever felt yourself to be—that is, on occasion, as a  _ lady _ , one finds oneself afflicted with a peculiar weakness upon waking, or late into the night after a good rousing quadrille with a good dance partner, or even—one might say  _ particularly  _ after a long turn about the gardens and a wonderful conversation with an especial friend?” She met Anne’s eyes for only the briefest, most painfully vulnerable of moments, beseeching her to understand. 

Anne, a faint smile of infinite tenderness on her lips, took Miss Walker’s hand in her own and turned it palm-up, stroking her thumb across the cool, smooth skin until Ann quite relaxed in that gentle grip. “I do think I understand, Miss Walker,” she said, her voice low, quite moved. Her fingertips traced up to the palest skin at Ann’s wrist.

The intimacy of this touch was so delicate that at first Ann remained lulled by the sweetness of it. Only after the tracery of those fingertips began to move slower and slower still, painting warmth along her skin, did she recognize the nervous tremble agitating in her breath and her blood. Ann could no more refuse Miss Lister this touch than she could beckon the sun to turn back its rays, but she knew its danger. With a spasm, she merely clasped her fingers over Anne’s, stilling that touch in a wordless plea.

“You wear my favor,” Anne said, leaning closer, their hands stilled yet entwined.

Lost in her eyes, Miss Walker could not summon speech.

“The gondola,” Anne clarified, letting go of her hand. She indicated the knot of Miss Walker’s lace fichu and the gleam of the miniature charm fastened there. Her touch, adjusting the fringe of the garment to display the charm to better advantage, weighed on the gossamer lace for a moment so that it brushed against Ann’s bare skin. A pleasant prickle of awareness bloomed in that spot like a ripple disturbing the surface of a still pond.

“You told me to wear it.”

“So I did,” Anne replied. A roguish smile twisted one corner of her mouth. “Shall you always do what I ask of you?” Anne leaned back on the settee, one arm draped over the wooden back as she took a last sip of her cordial. Her lips came away red and shining. “Perhaps I ought to temper my instructions lest they vex your nerves.”

Miss Walker recalled Miss Lister’s words upon the occasion of her gift:  _ Wear it always, and then when you think of me you’ll feel perfectly safe.  _ Yet it was not safety that traced upon her skin and lit up her nerves with a fickle, familiar restlessness. It was a kind of yearning, a need for something just out of reach. The gondola charm, when Anne had fastened it to her bosom, had felt like a momentary satiation. Something sweet and soft she did not know she needed until it was given to her: a harbor Ann longed for and knew not how to name or seek.

“Shall I not always follow your kind words, Miss Lister, when they grant me such happiness?”

Miss Lister’s eyes darkened then then, as the shadows leapt dim from the dying coals in the hearth. The servants had already cleared the wines from the sideboard and banked the fire, retiring for the night, a fact that made Miss Walker feel they were the only two remaining in the world, clinging to the settee in the darkness of an endless sea lest they drown.

“Truly, you find it so?” Anne leaned her chin on her hand, reclining her head near enough to whisper words into Ann’s ear. “Then yes, I rather think you shall follow my kind words. Right now, for instance, you will lend me your hand again.”

Miss Walker placed her hand in Anne’s lap, relishing sweetness born of that curious safety even while anticipation fluttered in her veins like a moth at a candle. Miss Lister, with a wolfish smile, pulled Ann even closer, so as to hold the pale, exposed inner arm across her lap, imprisoned there with a light touch. 

“Good girl. Do not move, now.” In this position, Anne need move her fingers only a little to make them dance up and down in maddening traceries again. “You know, of course, you are perfectly safe with me, aren’t you, Miss Walker?” Ann could only nod, face to face with Miss Lister as she endured this pleasurable torture. “Say the word, and I will desist,” she whispered. “But I rather think you like this, my dear Miss Walker.” She leaned down, her lips so close her breath landed against Ann’s mouth like the promise of a kiss.

She could only nod.  _ Do not move _ , Miss Lister’s command echoed in her head. It was madness, this feeling rising in her like waves, a yearning agitation more disturbing than the fits that induced her aunt to send a servant running for the doctor. Yet she endured it happily for Anne’s sake.

“Good girl,” Anne said, almost to herself, watching Ann’s face a moment longer. “Your doctor is quite, quite wrong, you know.”

“Oh?” Ann said, stupidly watching Miss Lister’s fingers rise to catch again at her lace fichu, pulling it aside to expose a few inches of her skin. A mystery, however, why Ann bent her neck to one side, allowing Miss Lister a better view.

“I like these pretty blushes too much, Miss Walker,” Anne said in a low, amused tone, leaning close to inspect Ann’s skin. “You make this too fun.” This was completed all too quickly for Miss Walker’s liking, though why, she could not have said. “Indeed. You require rather a different course of treatment. Yours is a delicate disposition, but all this nonsense about compresses and purgatives to quiet the nerves will never do. No, my dear. You require  _ crisis _ .” Her fingers, resuming their dance along Ann’s skin, and this word,  _ crisis _ , combined to ripple through her body with unexpected force. A gravity pinned her to the spot, in thrall to Miss Walker’s slow, deliberate, damning pronunciation. “You, Miss Walker, require a cure of the nerves excited past all reason.”

“I...I cannot.” Already this portended danger. To go further, past  _ all  _ reason? “We are so far from Halifax. If I am taken ill—”

“Ill? What makes you think I would allow you to take ill, Miss Walker?” She did not look Ann in the eye, absorbed in tracing the skin of Ann’s inner arm in that invisible handwriting, a tendril of fire as she followed as far as the inner bend of the elbow, and the ticklish roundness of her arm just below the flounce of her sleeve. “I am going to instruct you in the cure for your excitation.” Her fingers stilled and she looked up, gazing steadily into Miss Walker’s eyes. “That is, if you like.”

Ann’s breath caught at the dark promise there. “Please. Otherwise my cousin will insist on a doctor.” The agitation fluttered everywhere, like a bird trapped in her breath and blood and skin. “What is this cure?”

Chuckling, Miss Lister rose from the settee. “Ah, but you must ask nicely. Perhaps tomorrow—”

“Please,” Ann breathed, clutching at Miss Lister’s skirts in desperation.

“Please what?” A cool, evaluating regard from on high, dark eyes that Ann would gladly drown in, if only to gain the pleasure of her approval.

“ _ Gods _ —please, Miss Lister. Please, will you? Don’t leave me like this, I beg of you.”

“There’s my good girl,” she purred down at Ann, stroking one finger along her perfect gold curls. “How could anyone refuse such a pretty request?” Miss Lister drew Ann to her feet and before she could catch her breath with relief, Anne led her to the staircase and up to her chamber with swift, quiet steps along the midnight passages of the inn.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  



	2. Vexations most wondrous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hold still,” Anne said in a quiet voice, gaze brushing every curve of her body. “Good,” she murmured, almost to herself, her voice dropping to a hush as she stepped closer and closer still. “Do you trust me, Miss Walker?”

Breath still caught high in her throat, Ann peered into the gloom as Miss Lister’s confident, smooth grasp tugged her through the bedchamber door. Anne disappeared into the dark recesses of the room to light a candle at the low, banked coals of the fire.

The candle’s flame flared to reveal a carved wooden bed hung with fine damask curtains. Miss Lister, her dark eyes cannily watching every breath of disturbed nerves that unsettled Ann’s small frame, laid aside her dark velvet dinner jacket.

“Hold still,” Anne said in a quiet voice, gaze brushing every curve of her body. “Good,” she murmured, almost to herself, her voice dropping to a hush as she stepped closer and closer still. “Do you trust me, Miss Walker?”

“Quite completely,” Ann replied, her heart galloping in her chest. She could not have explained how she stood stock still in that moment, a doll on display, when far darker storms roiled her heart. Nor why she ached and suppressed a small tremble, wishing for the torture of Miss Lister’s fingertips and their traceries along her skin from mere moments ago.

“I only want to... _ cure _ your excitation.” Miss Lister’s voice, smooth and low and sure, rippled down Ann’s skin and tremors gathered in her joints, threatening agitation of a magnitude beyond her experience. “But you must be still.”

Ann governed her own breath, just barely, as Miss Lister unpinned the fichu with its golden gondola charm, her hands neither swift nor slow, and laid the lace garment gently over the dressing stand. She coolly unfastened the row of tiny, silk-covered buttons down the back of Ann’s bodice, loosening the dress by degrees until she tugged the sleeves down and the cloth collapsed around her waist. She stood utterly still as Miss Lister helped her step out of it, each footstep as dull as her heart beat sharp in her chest.

Anne moved around her ever so carefully, pausing behind her to settle hands on Ann’s shoulders, now covered only by the thin linen of her chemise. Her hands smoothed down her shoulders, brushing down her flanks to where the strings of her stays lay looped and knotted.

“May I?” A whisper deep into Ann’s ear, flickering nerves down to her core so that her answer emerged a soft gasp.

“ _ Please _ .”

Madness, to stand still under the soft tugging of Miss Lister’s fingers loosening the corset until that too fell away. Unseen behind her, in the candlelit dark, the architect of all this sighed, a soft sound, and traced the skin of Ann’s neck, down to the edge of the linen, where her touch lingered and curved a moment, as if loosening the cloth from the skin. 

If Ann could have ripped her own chemise to ribbons in that moment, she would have, simply to feel that touch again, more, the excitation of her nerves so fulsome she struggled to recall why, in another place, at another time, it would have necessitated doctors, nursemaids, attendants.

No. Just Miss Lister’s hands.

“On the bed,” came the soft words next into Ann’s ear. She climbed up onto the expanse of cool linen and laid down on her stomach, her face pillowed on one arm, and listened to the sound of cloth and ties and soft movements as Anne removed her own dress before lying down on the bed next to her.

A soft laugh. “Ah, so this is how they treat you, is it? On your belly.” Before Ann could control herself, a ripple of a shiver ran down her back in parallel to the fingers Miss Lister trailed down her spine.

Another soft gasp. “Yes.” She felt it, the same nervous excitation that seemed so urgent, so undeniable, that she wished to writhe out of her own skin. “Yes, just like this.”

“But with compresses, no?” Anne settled one hand low on her back, a caressing stroke that was maddeningly light, so that Ann’s breath caught in her throat. Feathering touches, not enough and yet too much. “With...hot cloths and herbs.” She pressed harder now, ever so slightly, as if to imitate the remedies of Ann’s aunt. “Yes.” Harder still, as if pinning her to the sheets, so that Ann gasped at the strength of the nervous fire running through her body. Delicious, slick as a summer liquor, making her hungry for something she could not name.

“Miss Lister, I—”

“Yes?”

“I need—I want—”

“Yes, my dear Miss Walker.” And with her free hand, Anne began to pull up the delicate hem of her chemise, slowly, so that the cloth tickled along the backs of her legs. Had it been anyone else, Ann would have squirmed away in embarrassment, murmuring decorously about  _ propriety  _ and  _ modesty _ . But this—this would prove to be her undoing, the culmination of every untoward whisper about Miss Lister that had ever broached polite society—yet Ann felt more than transfixed, she felt a kind of mad gladness trembling all through her limbs. If this was hypnosis, it was a spell of utter trust: it held her still and gladly as Miss Lister’s hands slowly stroked the backs of her bare thighs, warming the flesh by degrees and kneading at the spots of tension, and sliding the fingers of one hand higher, and higher, until a tremor pressed Ann to push back needily, on the edge of something greater, far greater—

“Do you want this?” Anne now hovered over her, her face tilting down to Ann’s own so that she could see her breath quickened just as much. A glitter in her eyes in the candle’s light, pupils dilated wide and dark and seeing all, Ann felt.

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Please, Miss Lister.  _ Please _ .”

“Good girl.” Ann died and woke again at those words, shivering with warm need. And then Anne’s fingertips crept higher and they both gasped at the wetness revealed there. 

“ _ Please,  _ please—”

“Yes, my pet,” Anne said, her low voice practically a growl, caressing, pressing, one finger and then two. Ann felt her thighs part wider, and she canted her hips to receive more. An excitation most wondrous, most immediate, Anne’s fingers finding places within that Ann felt sure would make her swoon. But she didn’t. She simply kept going, and that feeling grew, concentrated like a fire in her loins kindling from a coal, higher and higher it leapt, her sex swollen with need, Anne’s fingers and Anne’s breath in her ear, encouraging,  _ yes my pet, yes _ , one thumb pressing in against the center of that kindled flame until Ann felt it—the rising breath caught in her throat, eyelids crashing shut to capture it, hold onto it, never let go—she caught onto Miss Lister with both hands, that feeling was going to burst any second now—a blooming, a tense flowering-open in waves, thighs clenched together, her voice gone high and panting. Ann collapsed down as it ebbed, not a bone or nerve inside her except that wondrous tidal pulsing, its aftermath a keen, unguessable joy and a sweet slick between her thighs.

When she opened her eyes at last, Miss Lister reached down to smooth back a stray lock of her golden curls.

“There you are. My good girl.” Tracing Ann's lips with one fingertip, pulling her mouth open ever so slightly.

Wordless, undone, she could not speak. It took her some moments, her breath finally returning in a deep rushing sigh. “Miss Lister.”

A slow, calculating smile. “I said I knew the cure, did I not?”

“Yes.”

“I said I would instruct you, did I not?” A nod. “And you obeyed me so prettily, my dear, dear Miss Walker. My dear Ann.”

At the sound of her name upon Anne’s lips, a tremor of pleasure rippled down Ann’s skin again, an echo of the vexation she still could not name but now craved, utterly. Unable to speak more of it, she simply clasped Anne’s hand, pulling her closer on the pillow. With one hand combing through Ann’s tumbledown curls, Miss Lister settled closer still, nuzzling down to one ear with her heated breath.

“My dear Ann. I do think you require much instruction. Many lessons. It shall take us quite some time, I think. I do hope you shan’t mind the work.”

In the dim room, flesh still heated, Ann could only smile up into her dark, canny eyes. A promise, a wordless plea, a gaze of devotion. 

“Good girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting for the conclusion!! Thanks to my psychiatrist who fixed my meds so I could be a functioning human again and get back to the fandoms I love so much!!

**Author's Note:**

> Rating will go up for chapter 2, you've been warned!


End file.
